The Girl of his Dreams

2

Friends and relatives stood around them as the boat pulled up to the imbarcadero, but Brunetti kept his attention on the approaching dock and distracted himself with the thought of the restoration of Sergio's house, completed only six months before. If talk of their health was the chief diversion of the elderly and talking of sports that of men, then talk of property was the social glue that held all classes of Venetians together. Few can resist the lure of the sound of prices asked and paid, great deals made or lost, or the recitation of square metres, previous owners, and the incompetence of the bureaucrats whose task it is to authorize restorations or modernizations. Brunetti believed that only food was more often a topic of conversation at Venetian dinner tables. Was this the substitute for stories of what one did in the war: had acumen in the buying and selling of houses and apartments been substituted for physical bravery, valour, and

patriotism? Given that the only war the country had been involved in for decades was both a disgrace and a failure, perhaps it was better that people talk about houses.

The clock on the wall at Fondamenta Nuove told him that it was only a bit past eleven. His mother had always loved the mornings best: it was probably from her that Brunetti had got his early-morning cheerfulness, the quality of his which drove Paola closest to desperation. People filed off the boat, others filed on, then it took them quickly to the Madonna dell’Orto, where the Brunetti family and their friends got off the vaporetto and started back into the city, the church on their left.

They turned left at the canal, right over the bridge, and then they were at the door. Sergio opened it, and they filed quietly up the stairs and then into the apartment. Paola went towards the kitchen to see if Gloria needed help, and Brunetti walked over to the windows and looked out towards the facade of the church. The corner of a wall allowed him to see only the left hand side and just six of the apostles. The brick dome of the bell tower had always looked like a panettone to him, and so it did now.

He sensed the motion of people behind him, heard voices talking, and was glad that they were not lowered in one of those false genuflections to grief. He kept his back to them and to the talk and looked across at the facade. He had been out of the city that day more than a decade ago when someone had walked into the church and quietly removed the Bellini Madonna from the altar at the left and walked out of the church with it. The art theft people had come up from Rome, but Brunetti and his family had remained on holiday in Sicily, and by the time he got home, the art police had gone south again and the newspapers had tired of the case. And that was the end of that. And then nothing: the painting might as well have evaporated.

There was a change in the murmur of voices around him, and Brunetti turned away from the window to see why. Gloria and Paola and Chiara had emerged from the kitchen, the first two with trays of cups and saucers, and Chiara with another one that held three separate plates of home-made biscuits. Brunetti knew that this was a ceremony for friends, who would drink their coffee and soon leave, but he could not stop himself from thinking what a miserable, mean ending it was to a life so filled with food and drink and the warmth they generated.

From the kitchen Sergio appeared with three bottles of prosecco. 'Before the coffee’ he said, ‘I think we should say goodbye.'

The trays ended up on the low table in front of the sofa, and Gloria, Paola, and Chiara went back into the kitchen to return a few minutes later, each with six prosecco glasses sprouting out from the fingers of her upraised hands.

Sergio popped the first cork, and at the sound the mood in the room changed, as if by magic. He poured the wine into the glasses, making the round as the bubbles subsided. He opened another bottle and then the last, filling more glasses than there were people. Everyone crowded round the table and picked up a glass, then stood with it half raised, waiting.

Sergio looked across at his brother; but Brunetti raised his glass and nodded towards his elder brother, signalling that the toast, and the family, were now his.

Sergio raised his glass and the room grew suddenly still. He lifted it higher, looked around at the people in the room, and said, To Amelia Davanzo Brunetti and to those of us who love her still.' He drank down half the glass. Two or three people repeated his toast in soft voices, and then everyone drank. By the time they lowered their glasses, softness had stolen back into the room, and voices were natural again. The topics of life returned to their conversation, and with them the future tense sneaked back in.

Some glasses were abandoned and a number of people drank coffee, ate a few of the biscuits, and then they began to idle slowly towards the door, each of them pausing to speak to, and then kiss, both of the brothers.

In twenty minutes, there was no one left in the room except Sergio and Guido and their wives and children. Sergio looked at his watch and said, ‘I've reserved a table for all of us, so I think we should leave this here and go and have lunch’

Brunetti emptied his glass and set it beside the still full ones that stood abandoned in a circle on the table. He wanted to thank Sergio for having found something right but undramatic to say, but he didn't know how to do it. He started towards the door, then turned back and embraced his brother. Then he pulled away and went through the door. He went down the steps in silence and outside into the sun to wait for the rest of the Brunettis.